Cards such as credit cards, debit cards, and stored value cards are widely used by cardholders (e.g., consumers) to purchase products and services from merchants. The cards are issued by issuers (e.g., merchants and financial institutions). Many merchants issue the cards to promote consumers to purchase their products and services. Accordingly, merchant issuers offer various features, rewards, incentives, and promotions for enticing consumers to use the cards. One feature commonly offered by merchant issuers allows the consumer to select the appearance of a physical card from a few pre-defined card designs offered by the merchant issuer. However, merchant issuers lack the ability to efficiently allow the consumer to interactively select and combine components of the design to create either a physical card or virtual card aesthetically customized for the client. In addition, merchant issuers lack the ability to efficiently allow the consumer to interactively select and combine several merchants to create a physical or virtual card which is accepted by the several selected merchants.
Additionally, stored value cards, in particular, are awarded by merchants, financial institutions, employers, and other entities as rewards or incentives in motivational and loyalty programs. A stored value card, which may be a physical and/or virtual card, represents money on deposit with the issuer of the card or an affiliate of the issuer. For example, a stored value card may be a gift card issued by a particular merchant and is redeemable with the particular merchant. In another example, the stored value card is a pre-paid debit or credit card which is issued by a credit association (e.g., American Express®) affiliate and is redeemable with particular merchants accepting the credit association brand.
Motivational programs may be administered internally or administered by incentive companies which have contracted with the sponsoring entities (e.g., merchants, financial institutions, and/or employers). Based on various criteria, the participant (e.g., consumer, employee) accumulates a stored value card for a particular amount. For example, a particular sponsoring merchant may reward a consumer with a gift card redeemable for products sold by the merchant if the consumer uses a credit card issued by the merchant to purchase products from the merchant. In another example, a sponsoring employer contracts with an incentive company to administer various stored value cards after an employee has accrued a particular number of points based on the employee's performance. Additional details regarding cards used for implementing incentive award programs are disclosed by U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,689,100 and 5,956,695, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference. Although such motivational programs provide rewards/incentives based on an individual participant's performance, the motivational programs fail to allow the sponsor to provide the individual participant with a stored value card customized by the sponsor for the individual participant.
The need for a card giver (e.g., sponsor) to customize the card for the card recipient (e.g., cardholder) similarly applies to stored value cards given as gifts. Stored value cards are commonly purchased by a consumer for gifting to a card recipient. However, currently consumers are unable to efficiently purchase and customize the card to reflect the occasion for the gift and/or personalize the card to reflect the recipient of the gift.